


50% Odds

by cloudtalking



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men Evolution
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), F/F, Fix-It, Gen, Jewish Peter Parker, M/M, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie), Team Red, au where MJ Ned and the rest never blipped, everyone’s alive and also cap brought peggy back instead of staying, lady death don’t do that you’ll— o shyt she has airpods in, op is a comic and evolution stan, peter is a new yorker and will curse ty, picks up literally right after the final battle, this is going to take up so much room i’m so sorry, u don’t need to kno anything abt xmen or fantastic 4 or lady death to read this dw
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-24
Updated: 2019-07-24
Packaged: 2020-07-12 14:21:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19947592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cloudtalking/pseuds/cloudtalking
Summary: Five years ago, Thanos snapped his fingers and half the world blipped out of existence. Now, Peter must learn to navigate not only the clusterfuck that is his new life, but a whole new age of superheroes that view him not just as a web-slinging neighborhood hero, but as a role model and a symbol for good. It’s true what they say, they really do love you when you’re dead.(au where tony is alive, no one peter loved blipped, and peter has to make new friends. and boyfriend.)





	1. 1 million heroes walk into a bar

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE LIKE 10196K SO FAR AND HAD TO EDIT AFTER FFH BC THEY CALL IT THE BLIP IM SO STUPID!!! but i hope y’all like it

The first thing Peter does is call May.

He's just sitting amongst the rubble, broken parts of mechanized people mixed with ash and debris. The Chitauri, making their graves on Earth for the second time now, though all the biological waste has been dusted. He remembers the way they split the sky the first time around, cutting through steel towers like butter, killing indiscriminately. Peter remembers being terrified, realizing that at any moment he or his family could die and that no one could do anything about it. He’s terrified now, even after the battle is over, because he’s one of the only ones who can. Peter’s been the city’s main protector long enough for the city to become dependent on him, and he’s been dead for five years.

Peter makes himself comfortable on his throne of robot corpses and pulls his phone from the pocket of his suit, hitting the first number in his contacts list and pressing it to his ear. 

Peter’s watched a lot of movies in his life. Older movies with May and Happy when he comes around, sci-fi with Ned, horror movies when MJ comes over and vetoes any choices that have ‘star’ in the title. All of them had death scenes, scenes when actor would mourn their character’s lost sibling/mother/lover/friend, or scenes when they would cry in relief to see that person still standing. None of his favorites could ever have captured the animal emotion in May’s voice when she answers; “Peter?”

“Hey, Aunt May.” His voice was less hoarse when he was stuck crying for help under a building. “I’m back.”

The first thing Aunt May does is curse on god in several different directions, which is such a wholesome and familiar action that it makes Peter’s eyes wet. May chokes on her own tears, barely coherent. “Five fucking years, hon. Five godless fucking years you were dead. We put a stone up next to Ben—“ 

Peter gasps, hot and wet and loud into the receiver. May quiets. “Contact me every hour on the hour, you hear me? So help me god I’ll track Stark down and pull his eyes out through his asshole, don’t tell me I won’t.”

It’s laughter then, that wracks his chest like a violent cough and leaves his ribs aching. “I love you, May.”

“I love you too, Pete. Come home safe.”

The .90 caliber heroes are still on, talking with arching hand gestures and quick, manly embraces. Captain Marvel slaps her hand on Thor’s far shoulder in a move he’s seen frat boys execute with less platonic finesse. There’s the matter of the unconscious Tony Stark, whose arm is in a makeshift sling and who’s being held by an astonishingly gentle Hulk, along with the matter of returning hundreds of Earth’s heroes to their homes. King T’Challa is talking to his people— some of which who are directing the Hulk to put Mr. Stark into their capable hands— and negotiating with Captain America the methods by which his people will be returned home. Last Peter had checked in, the winning route was by Doctor Strange’s portals, but that had been foiled around the same time that the good doctor fucked off back to New York along with the rest of the magicians, refusing to exert any more of his energy on the other “superpowered assholes.” Peter resigns himself to leaving only when Mrs. Potts does, because at least she is too responsible to keep him stranded.

“It’s Mrs. Stark now, actually,” she explained after the dust had been settled for about an hour and the tear tracks were sticky on her face. “But please, Tony’s been telling my daughter enough stories about you to make Spider-Man her favorite hero after himself, which is saying a lot. It’s about time you called me Pepper.”

Peter doesn’t have any more of an idea of what to do with that now than he did when she said it, and he’s had at least an hour to process. Mr. Stark got married. Mr. Stark remembered him. Mr. Stark has a kid. Mr. Stark cares enough about Peter to make sure his kid knows about him. Pepper is somehow a nickname for Virginia. There’s a lot of information trying to link itself together in his brain, but his synapses have taken the loss and decided not to fire, not that he much blames them. Peter’s pretty focused on having been dead for five years, himself. 

Peter picks himself up off of the pile of scrap metal— really, he needs to bring some of it back with him to study. The Chitauri were so modded up with alien tech that there was barely any flesh left in them— and joins the .90 calibers over by the wrecked Avengers base. 

King T’Challa stands as regal in his Black Panther suit as he does in a three-piece, even surrounded by the devastated landscape. There’s something to royalty that bends the air no matter the atmosphere. “We have contacted our pilots, and they are well equipped to take home most of our armies, but we cannot in good conscience leave over two-hundred of our own people in a foreign country without arrangements made for their comfort.”

“We own an airline,” Pepper offers, which is news to Peter but not at all surprising. It probably operates entirely on clean energy, nuclear fusion safely harnessed by Stark Industries to become a cleaner alternative to fission or something equally as impressive. “We can provide the means to transport the rest.”

King T’Challa turns to his guard and his sister for conference, eventually deciding that they would be grateful for her help, but they can only accept on the condition that the planes be piloted by the Wakandan soldiers. For all they appreciate the Avengers and the friendly relationships they’ve made over the last five years, they do not want to risk outsiders in their country during such unstable times. This starts a whole other debate, with T’Challa’s sister chiming in that “Stark’s airships might be outdated compared to mine, but I’m sure our soldiers are capable of flying them home and back without trouble.”

Peter kind of wants to be her when he grows up. Unfortunately, she looks like she’s about the same age as him, and he doubts he’ll be half as accomplished in double the time. He joins the group just as T’Challa and the Boss Guard reprimand her. “Shuri, please. This woman is doing us a service, do not insult her and her company out of turn.” 

Shuri crosses her arms, pouting up at her brother. “I just want to be on our way already. This can be easy, you know, just give us the planes and we’ll give them back.”

Pepper laughs, more about releasing tension than humor. “Yes, but there’s the matter of the pilots we employ and company policy. We want at least two Stark Industry employees on every plane to make sure nothing is tampered with, and in the case that your pilots are unused to our controls, that everything goes smoothly.”

“We’ll allow one, and instruct our people to treat them with utmost courtesy. Is that acceptable?” T’Challa decides, and after a minute of careful consideration, Pepper nods. 

Shuri sighs loudly and with feeling, which Peter echoes in his soul. Finally, the adults are done with the complicated political shit. He takes this opportunity to enter the conversation. “Cool, so how are the rest of us getting home? Some of us are five years late to curfew, you know.” 

Pepper flinches. Oops, bad timing. Peter’s going to be feeling guilty about that one for the next year, he knows. “Uh, sorry. I just really, really want to go home.”

“I know, Peter.” Pepper’s face softens, smoothed out by sadness that Peter hopes he didn’t put there but knows he did. “Yours and Tony’s plane is arriving soon, the rest of us are staying a while longer to sort things out.”

Normally, Peter would resent being sat at the kiddie table— or the kids-and-wounded-adults table, as it were— but he doesn’t have the energy to care. He just nods and heads back off to his dead robot pile to wait. A few minutes later, he’s joined by Shuri in all her badass whiz kid glory, grinning spectacularly. “Hey, Spider Boy.”

“Spider-Man.”

“I saw you when you came out of the portal. You had your mask off, remember? You’re not fooling anyone.”

Peter totally forgot about the secret identity thing. He’s going to see one of the wizard people in a bodega and have to walk to another, less quality bodega on the opposite side of the street without making eye contact. He buries his face in his hands.

Shuri continues on. “Spiderling. Baby Spider. Itsy Bitsy. Honey, I Shrunk The—“

He lifts his head just to stop her. “If I wasn’t like, literally just resurrected, I’d say this is hell.” 

Shuri laughs and steals his phone to take his number, citing. “Kid table solidarity, yeah?” He knows it’s just to keep making fun of him when he leaves. 

When she pulls out her own, unfamiliar device, Peter has to call bullshit. “What the fuck kinda phone is that?”

“It’s not,” Shuri replies, not looking up from the _holographic screen what the fuck that’s so cool._ She gives his own Stark-Phone back like the pitiful trash it is. “Not as outsiders know it, at least. I get wrong number calls from Asgard. You lot are behind the times, but it’s made so that I can communicate with you even with your prehistoric tech.” 

With stars Peter can feel twinkling in his eyes, he asks, “Can I have one?”

Shuri laughs sharply. “If you call your Tony Stark’s own life’s work shit to his face and only come to me for your suits from now on? Maybe.”

He’s still seriously considering it when Pepper comes around to let him know the plane is here, reminding him of his loyalties and most importantly who pays him. “I love and support Stark Industries, thank you so much.”

Pepper blinks. “You’re welcome? Please channel that love and support to the care of my unconscious husband and the father of my child during the flight.”

Completely serious, he nods. “I’ll protect him with my life.”

“Just go.”

The flight is short and mostly unnecessary, the only reason why they don’t take a car is because the traffic induced by the Blipped rushing home to see their families is unprecedented even by NYC standards. Peter whistles low as he watches out the window of the jet, the same one he flew in to Berlin. He wishes he had that camera on him now, but it’s been two-and-five years now since he’s seen it at all.

He texts May to meet him at the airport, and she’s running onto the landing strip before the plane even touches down. Not that he can talk, jumping out the door and missing the stairs just so he can see her a little faster. She wraps her arms around him and sobs, hair just a little more gray and skin just a little more worn out than he remembers, but even when she’s crying she’s still beautiful, still Peter’s mom in all but name. 

May’s fingernails dig into his skin hard enough to make him bleed, just enough to make sure he’s real. “You’re never gonna die on me again? You hear me? Never fucking again.”

Peter hugs her back with just enough restraint not to bruise. He remembers when it was all he could do to hold onto her, when he was small and courageous and jumped on her back while she was doing chores, determined to initiate a piggy back ride across the apartment while she was just as determined to pry him off of her. He remembers during the Battle of New York, hugging her tight and it never feeling tight enough that no one could take her from him. Now, if he’s especially careless, he can break May’s ribs more naturally than holding back from doing so. He buries his face in her shoulder and leaves tear stains when they separate, knowing that he’ll die twice before his time no matter what she has to say about it. 


	2. please collect your pension

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ned and MJ are different than peter remembers. like, way different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chap has mentions of x-men and also coincidentally backstory as to why mutants are gonna b prevalent in this fic that i didn’t actually intend on but hey cool

The Blipped, as Peter has learned to call himself and all the rest of Thanos’s victims, caused widespread chaos with the paperwork created by their return. Peter, being one of many students killed before finishing the school year, will be once again a Junior come fall. 

May doesn’t quite understand his frustration, citing that “You’re back from the dead, Pete. You and about four billion other people. The world needs time to recover, and so do you.” 

Being dead, as far as he remembers, is just the same as sleeping, save for some weird dreams about a woman made of bone. He doesn’t need time to recover, he needs to be busy beyond reason to keep his mind from wandering. He needs to be graduating as quickly as possible to catch up to his friends, who are halfway through their own junior year at college. 

He races to Ned’s apartment as soon as he’s settled— on foot, because May has yet to clear him for his usual extracurriculars. Mrs. Leeds opens their bright red door and her face breaks and brightens all at once. “Oh,” she says with every emotion known to man. “ _ Peter _ .”

She ushers him in, hand on his shoulders, yelling something in Tagalog that carries up towards Ned’s room. Peter knows the similarities between Spanish and Tagalog don’t necessarily mean congruency in everything, but it’s enough that he knows what she means;  _ come down here, your best friend is alive.  _

Ned’s door is thrown open, and sprinting down the stairs comes someone who almost looks like someone Peter’s met once upon a time. Bulk that’s obviously muscle, a loose black shirt tucked into adidas sweats, and most startling of all— a navy-blue zip-up hoodie hanging open on his shoulders, OSCORP proudly emblazoned on his breast. 

“Ned,” Peter breathes. “You didn’t.”

Ned glances at his chest and back up towards Peter, eyes wide and pupils small. “Peter, wait, I can explain—“

Peter shakes his head, backing away slowly. “Oscorp _?  _ I never knew you to sink that low.”

“Please, I’m a college student. I need the cash, Peter—“

“I hope you’re happy with yourself. You and your dirty money. What did it cost?”

“Everything.” Ned answers, and then laughs his traitor ass off. “Oh god, you don’t know that one. You were dead. Holy shit this is terrible, let me just—“

After holing up in Ned’s room with blankets and an Oscorp laptop that makes Peter want to clean his soul in boiling water, Peter leans his head on Ned’s shoulder and sighs. “Dude, what the fuck did I miss?”

Ned makes a hollow sound that Peter can almost see, in the scars and the calluses that Ned’s accumulated in the five years he’s been gone. “You don’t know the half of it, man.”

Friday night, Peter and Ned head out to a relatively clean part of the sewer that Peter remembers fighting in (five years and) two months ago. It’s easy access so far as sewers go, a couple blocks from the actual entrance that actual employees of this fine city use, already putting it ahead most of the underground lairs he’s been lured into. Very little rat friends though, three stars. 

“MJ!” Ned calls, hand cupping his lips. “There’s something you’re gonna want to see.”

There’s quick, hard hitting footsteps bouncing off the walls of the tunnel. It reminds Peter of his own steps, jumping around during melee fights in claustrophobic spaces. While the baddies remember not to give him the space to swing, they always forget that he can walk on walls. 

A dark figure comes to a halt in front of them, just out of the light. They’re concealed by a too-big black hoodie over black leggings, a black face mask that looks like it's part of a turtleneck pulled up over their nose. 

Then they come into the light, and Peter’s lone brain cell craps out. “Hold on, MJ?”

She nods, blank faced and yellow eyed. “Hey Peter, how’s death?”

“She’s good,” he says without thinking too much on it. “What’s going on with, uh—“

MJ tilts her head. “With what?”

“Uh, your— you know what, nevermind, lets just ignore the demon cat eyes. How’s college?”

“It’s eh, there’s a lot of people to draw though.” 

“That’s great, MJ.” She does like to draw people in pain, after all. “What’s your major?”

Ned wheezes. “Holy shit, guys. MJ please, don’t leave him hanging like this, c’mon.”

Rolling her eyes and bestowing mercy upon poor, lowly Peter Parker, MJ explains. 

“You’ve been gone for a long time, Peter. The city needed Spidey, and when it didn’t have you, everyone else had to come together and fill the vacuum.”

Peter points to himself. “Spidey? Me? I think you’re mistaken—“

“Boy, you couldn’t keep a secret from me if you shoved it up your ass and jumped off a bridge. Also Ned cracks like an egg under pressure.”

“Point.”

“Hey!” Ned shouts, and is promptly ignored because they all know the truth. Not that Peter blames him— MJ could crack any of them open and fry them, and no one would be able to stop her. 

“Also your web shooters are out, pull down your sleeves.” 

“Oh fuck, thanks man.”

“You’re welcome, anyway—“ she pulls down her mask, revealing two extra eyes hiding on her cheeks. “Shit happened.”

Peter whistles. “Those are fucking sick, MJ.”

MJ smiles and her new eyes smile with her. “I know. They let me see heat signatures, so I can track people down and find them even in the dark.” She looks especially proud of this fact, while Ned looks actively terrified. There’s a story there that Peter isn’t going to pursue. “Apparently, there’s this thing called an X-gene present in most of the human population. It’s only active in about a quarter of us, though, and it’s usually activated by either puberty or extreme stress. When everyone Blipped, it induced the latter for me and a lot of other people, and now we have superpowers. You probably had a dormant X-gene before the spider-bite, which explains why you got your powers and didn’t just die from radiation exposure. My major is biochemistry, by the way.”

“Woah,” Peter breathes. “So you’re like, Charles Xavier and shit?” He heard Tony mention that guy once, offhandedly. He hadn’t pressed beyond finding out that the guy was a mega powerful telepath, and that he was on the Good Guy Team, patent pending. He regrets that noninterest now.

“Yeah, like Charles Xavier and shit, except not at all,” she says. “Prof X runs the X-men, which is a mutant superhero group that really only fights when there’s mutant-related conflict. I’m lowkey one of your vigilante replacements, highkey a Murlock who works to help mutants left homeless and living in the sewers, highkey an activist for mutant rights overall.”

The Murlocks, apparently lead by some badass named Callisto, all live down here in the sewers together in some utopian marxist community. History’s shown that that structure won’t last, so MJ leads protests and storms conferences pushing for mutant rights, especially mutants with obvious physical mutations like herself and most of the other Murlocks. 

“It might’ve been okay if we were just humanoid mutants, like most of the rest are. But there’s no way we can hide it. Some of us were evicted, some of us were disowned. This is a safe place.”

“What about you?”

MJ shrugs. “Beats paying rent.”

Apparently, Ned has also taken up the vigilante torch, but he wanted to wait until they were hidden beneath the city to say anything. 

“In my defense,” he says, hands raised above his head. “The nature of my job lends to being wiretapped and shit.”

Peter crosses his arms and pouts. “The ladies and gentlemen of the jury take that under consideration, but still require you to defend your case, Mr. Leeds.”

“Okay, Okay. So—“ 

With the rising influx of vigilante activity in New York City came the rising demand for good Guys in Chairs. Ned, being the best Guy in Chair he knew, purchased himself a few burner phones and started distributing numbers. He quickly became the guy in the chair for most of NYC’s underground heroes, and a few in Westchester. He also became a target, which he then remedied by training with the Murlocks and a few of his other loyal customers. 

“And now you’re a jacked IT guy,” Peter summarizes. 

“Yeah, that’s about it.”

“And you've been cheating on me with half of New York?”

“Peter, no, it’s not what you think—“

Poising his fingers to activate his web shooters, Peter shakes his head. “I won’t hesitate, bitch.”

“I hate both of you,” MJ decides. “Also, if you web up my sewer I’m putting you on the ban list.”

Peter gasps. “No wait, I love it here! This is a three-star sewer! MJ!”

When they wind down, and Peter is crouching on the wall above his (old as shit) friends, MJ thinks to ask, “When are you planning on making your comeback?”

Peter blinks. “My what?”

“You’ve been gone for five years, Pete. They built a monument for you. Once you start spidering again, it’s gonna be a big deal to a lot of people.”

He lets himself fall to the ground between his friends, suddenly too small for his skin. “They built me a monument?”

MJ and Ned exchange glances. “Okay,” Ned says, grabbing his hand. “Let’s go.”

The Spider-Man monument isn’t particularly huge, but it’s bigger than Peter expected it to be. There’s a short pedestal, a statue of Peter in-suit, holding a bike above his head, and a pathway lined with a short, smooth rock wall with names carved into every inch.

MJ explains; “It’s all the people you’ve saved that have come out and credited you for it— and the people who donated to the monument, of course.” 

Peter can’t breathe, watching all the tourists and the native New Yorkers walk through. “Oh. I was a pretty big deal, huh?”

Ned laughs. “Yeah dude, yeah you were.”

MJ elbows them both in the ribs, to which they loudly protest. “You’re still a big deal, Peter, for all that you’re also still a weirdass nerdy kid. The city misses you, and you’re gonna give yourself back to them, right?”

Peter things of the suit, hidden away in his closet. He thinks of Aunt May crying into his hair. He thinks of the names on the rock wall in front of him. “Yeah,” he answers honestly. “Of course, I’ll do it tonight.”

Aunt May is not so much amenable to this idea. “What the fuck do you mean, you’re going on patrol?”

“The city needs me,” he says, fully suited save for the mask and standing in the middle of their living room, where he’d been attempting to say goodbye for the past five minutes. “Or they need Spider-Man, anyway. I want to let them know that I’m back.”

“Peter, I just got you back.” May stands up from her spot on the couch, cupping his face in her hands. “Don’t leave me again so soon.”

“May,” he tries, but he can’t finish it the way he wants to.  _ I’ll be fine,  _ or  _ that’s never going to happen again, don’t worry.  _ Instead, he sighs and puts his own hands on May’s shoulders. “I have to. Saving people is what I do, and without me lots of people would be dead.”

Peter tries to ignore the shine in his aunt’s eyes when she nods and kisses him on the forehead. “Come home safe, yeah?”

“I will,” he promises, though it’s empty, and hugs her tight before rushing to his room to pull clothes on over his suit. He needs to take off from 23rd or around, because last time he was closer to 7th, and— even if it was five years ago— switching it up is a healthy part of a superhero’s daily routine. 

Finally, he’s back on the field. New York isn’t going to have to miss him for much longer. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next up: johnny storm ;)))))

**Author's Note:**

> i write for free that’s all thanks


End file.
